What To Talk To Your Partner About Before Getting Serious, According To Real Women

Deciding to get married is fun, beautiful and exciting. But, more than anything else, it's IMPORTANT. You are deciding to spend the rest of your life with someone. So, yes, it would be easy to get swept up in the excitement of the wedding planning and the cute Instagram posts but it's also important to take some very important things you need to talk to your partner about before getting serious. A recent Reddit AskWomen thread asked ladies to share, from personal experience, what they wished they talked about with their partners before taking their relationships to the next level.

Do yourself a favor and learn from their mistakes by asking these questions before escalating things with your partner.

How do you go about taking care of sick loved ones?

Something we talked briefly about but were then confronted with within a year or two of marriage that we felt ill prepared for:

What are each of your expectations when it comes to supporting family members or close friends in need?

This includes but is not limited to---Eldercare. Will your aging parents come live with you? Will you pay for a residential facility for them? Pay off their mortgage? Move to be closer to them?-Debts. Do you loan money to family? Give it? How much? How often?-Troubled siblings. Can a brother who lost his job and his relationship/living situation in one swoop come stay with you? For how long? Can a sister with a drug addiction and no stable housing do the same?

Are the two of you culturally compatible?

If you're the same race/religion, obvs my comment won't be relevent, but maybe someone will see.

When I first started dating my SO, I thought I was Americanized enough to be with someone who wasn't knowledgeable about my culture. I'm not. I'm so grossly Arab and realized I need someone who is at least halfway there. We're working on it, but idk.

Who's going to do what around the house?

Where will you be spending the holidays?

The only real sticking point my husband and I had after we got together was where we'd be spending holidays. Everything else was talked about or just naturally sorted itself out. Three years of marriage (almost) and we're still squabbling over holiday arrangements.

How do you hang the toilet paper?

What are you allergic to?

Medical stuff. I made an off-handed comment about an allegery I have to a certain medication and my husband and had no idea. We realized we've never really sat down and discussed that stuff so we're putting it in a file in case we need to make medical decisions for each other.

I feel so dumb for never thinking of it but I'm glad it came up before we actually needed it.

What is your career realistically going to require of you?

We married comparatively young so while we discussed work/family balance we didn't actually know what that meant and what that would look like when we actually had to do it. Hopefully, you each have a good idea of what your careers require of you so you can discuss how your careers will interact with your relationship and your responsibilities to your relationship and your family, especially if you have children.

Will you be sharing bedrooms?

I wish I had known that my ex-husband had planned on separate bedrooms before we married. I tried to have all the talks, he agreed with me on all topics, we married, then he proceeded to do his own thing. When I called him on it, he told me he was just being polite.

Be careful about long distance relationships. Living together in the flesh is a must.

I know these aren't the most casual conversations to seamlessly bring up at breakfast with your BAE but, if you plan on spending the rest of your lives together, you may have to suck it up and try anyway. It's for the sake of your love!!

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